Bus Travel

I enjoyed our bus ride yesterday. There were a lot of things I did not think about though, like how to find the door to the bus when it pulled up. If Mickey had not told us where to go I would have ended up groping the side of the entire bus until I found it. On the first bus the man that helped us was very nice, but just kind of grabbed me and did not tell me who he was. I think we talked a little about this yesterday, how it is hard to tell if the people helping you are nice or if they might have other intensions. If the man had told me from the beginning that he was a city bus employee it would have made me feel better. I kept thinking what a nice man he was, but when we got to the plaza and he did everything for us I started to get a little annoyed. I wanted us to have the experience asking for help, but how can you ask when someone doesn't let you have the chance? I know he had good intensions and he could have been much worse. When we were being taken to the gate for our second bus I was the last person in the sighted guide chain, so I was sticking way out to one side and scraped the side of my arm across a concrete pillar...it still hurts!

I thought it was strange when the second bus driver asked is we were really blind, and our bus helper guys said 'of course they are, they were this way when we picked them up from FSU'. Someone else at the mall asked me and David if we were 'playing blind'. Honestly who does that? Either some people no manners or we must have been doing a really bad job looking like we were blind. At one point on the bus I was talking to Katie and I realized I was using hand gestures...so maybe that tipped someone off.

The mall was a new experience. I've been so used to being outside with traffic, the sun, and sidewalks to guide me, the wide open space of the mall was confusing. And trailing is almost impossible because the store fronts are all different, sicking out and going back in at different angles. I kept losing the side of the wall, only to smack into it a few feet later. Once we got to the area with different textured tile it was much easier to follow. Walking through the bookstore was a little difficult because everything felt so close together, it was like a maze.

The bus ride home was easy, expect Katie and I realized we never told the driver to tell us when we were at the plaza, so every time we stopped from longer than 5 seconds we thought we were there.

Overall the bus experience was great. I have planned bus routes for students, I wrote my unit plan for this class about bus travel, and I have ridden the bus with my sight many times. Riding it with no sight, and dealing with others attitudes towards me as a 'blind' person was wonderful. Just like our O&M travel, it taught me what it would really be like to go through it, what my students will go through when I teach them bus travel.